Friday, February 06, 2015

All about the World Cup, or is it?

Three years after the entire fiasco regarding the awarding of Cricket rights was played out, SLRC has been thrust forward as the official broadcaster of all things cricket involving Sri Lanka. CSN which was unceremoniously stripped of the rights over non payment of dues to ESPN Star Sports and has now been relegated to a sports channel that only has sports as part of their branding.

This was bound to happen, the high handed tactics used to obtain the same rights has now been used against them. It's sad though as the only television channel brave enough to dwell into the sports genre & did show a spark of promise only fall victim to changing political culture.

It's arguable whether it is correct to specifically target a channel with taxes designed for it. However we should remind ourselves that CSN didn't play fair too.

The future for CSN seems bleak, the channel may rebrand itself or may sell out. Then there remains the question on the legality of the CSN transmitters.

The good news is that SLRC with it's superior coverage will be telecasting the World Cup & it seems that in the future private broadcasters will be able to bid for major sporting events. This move was expected too since, if we could call the previous regime's pet "CSN", then the present one's pet is most likely the Maharaja trio of "Sirasa TV, Shakthi TV & MTV Sports".

One thing is certain, this is more political poker than a fight for World Cup rights!

This forum is dedicated to highlight the happenings in the Sri Lankan Broadcasting Industry and also keeps you updated on happenings Internationally also. We will also provide certain Program Highlights, Technological Uses and anything related to the broadcasting field locally and Internationally. We will focus mainly on Sri Lanka since this is a Sri Lankan forum.